The article examines a significant array of Alexei Kruchenykh’s ego documents — diary entries and workbooks that he kept from 1927 to the mid-1960s, which form the basis of his personal fund at RGALI (No. 1334). The auto-archiving technology developed by Kruchenykh is considered as a purposefully chosen strategy of uncensored writing, designed for the implicit reader of the future. The study focuses on both the advantages of the pragmatics of self-isolation and the inevitable negative consequences revealed by the scientific study of the unpublished legacy of Kruchenykh. Using the example of work and diary notebooks of the first “hermetic decade” (the 1930s), the archiving methodology that had fully developed by that time, the ratio of diary and creative entries, draft and white text, is analyzed. The study presents the editions of Kruchenykh’s works (poems, auto-epitaphs, and epigrams) that he highlighted in his diaries and workbooks from 1934 to 1939. The later editions of Kruchenykh’s “ironic auto epitaphs” (typescript, calligraphy) continue the cycle begun by Kruchenykh on April 17, 1930 (the day of Mayakovsky’s funeral). Coming very close to the diary text, the auto epitaphs of the mid-1930s enter into a hidden polemic with the recommendations of friends of the poet Artyom Vesely (1899–1938) and Pavel Vasiliev (1910–1937) to break self–isolation and take a place befitting the “innovator of Soviet poetry” in the Union of Writers of the USSR. A new method of creating an avant-garde text is considered in detail — the inversion of “morphology,” in which the normative lexeme is homonymically decomposed into two independent root morphemes. Considerable attention is paid to the “prophetic” writings of Twisted July — August 1939, devoted to the premonition of a great war (“instead of winter — spring, instead of spring — war”), completing the diary and creative notebooks of the 1930s.
The article compares two versions of Alexei Kruchenykh’s poem The Fateful Shadows of Sunset, dedicated to the memory of Vladimir Mayakovsky (April 17–22). The article provides a detailed account of the creation of the requiem. It also draws parallels between the changes in Kruchenykh’s literary pragmatics in the 1930s (conscious refusal to publish and transition to “working in the drawer”) and the active use of zaum language in the second edition of the poem on April 20–22, 1930.
The article is the first publication of Alexei Kruchenykh’s diary entries, which are almost entirely devoted to Vladimir Mayakovsky’s suicide, which had a huge impact on his contemporaries and the further development of the Russian avant-garde. The diary notes were made under the direct impression of a tragic event. Kruchenykh almost documented his experiences, the situation, the reaction of Mayakovsky’s relatives and his literary entourage, and the actions of the investigation. Trying to understand the reasons for suicide (and questioning this version), Kruchenykh collected eyewitness accounts of the last days and hours of the poet’s life and compared them with newspaper and magazine publications. The diary reproduces his own conversations with Mayakovsky in recent months, and gives a description of Mayakovsky, which he made on the basis of many years of personal and creative communication. The scientific commentary, which reconstructs events and provides new data, is of exceptional importance when the records are first published. Commenting on such materials allows to outline the circle of people, events and opinions, reproducing the unofficial context of Mayakovsky’s death. Comparing these notes with the official narrative (publications about Mayakovsky’s death in the Soviet press) and modern information forms a comprehensive view of the events that have been controversial to date both among experts on the Russian avant-garde and a wide range of readers. When compiling the scientific commentary, documentary materials of the “Criminal Case No. 02–29 ‘On the Suicide of Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky’” and related archival publications were used. The most interesting documents that are directly related to the diary entries are given in the scientific commentary.
This article introduces into scholarly circulation selected letters of Sergei Eisenstein (1898–1948) to his wife, collaborator, and keeper of his archive, Pera Atasheva (Pearl Moiseyevna Fogelman, 1900–1965). The letters are held in the Eisenstein collection at the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI), where they form the second largest body of his epistolary legacy — no fewer than 180 letters, notes, and telegrams — yet only an insignificant portion has been published to date. The authors examine the correspondence as a unique ego-document of relevance to the study of memory, identity, and cultural politics of the Soviet era. The analysis focuses on the “extreme” periods of the director’s life: the crisis following his return from abroad, work on Bezhin Meadow under conditions of mounting ideological pressure, and the making of Ivan the Terrible during the wartime evacuation in Alma-Ata. Atasheva figures in the correspondence not merely as a recipient but as a kind of “other” indispensable for articulating the director’s inner creative drama. In dialogue with her, Eisenstein formulates his assessments of unfolding events, reflects on the mechanisms of power, and gives voice to private traumatic experience. Particular attention is paid to the stylistic variability of the letters: alongside laconic, “telegraphic” writing, passages of free associative prose emerge, and Eisenstein makes extensive use of what he called an “international creole” — a hybrid of Romance languages rendered in both Latin and Cyrillic script,inflected with Odessa vernacular and the phonetics of the Jewish shtetl. The publication is accompanied by historical and cultural commentary and preserves the spelling and punctuation of the originals.
This article analyzes representations of the phenomenon of premature death among poets in diaries and the Soviet public sphere in the 1920s and 1930s. We have highlighted the figures of Sergey Esenin, Andrey Sobol, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Eduard Bagritsky, whose deaths were perceived as premature in the public sphere. The circumstances of their deaths, coupled with the established principles of functioning of the literary field, created conditions for the creation of a range of positions within which both discursive practices and emotional states were articulated. Their analysis raises the question of the possibility of establishing boundaries between emotional communities, as well as the usage of the entire spectrum of narratives by their members. At the same time, the emotional regime established in the first few weeks after the deaths is compared with its normal state, which was established within the framework of government resolutions. At the same time, the article specifies that the field suffered several adjustments during the selected period. In addition, the article uses the diary notes of Yuri Olesha and Alexei Kruchenykh as sources, which, together with the album collection, provide an additional perspective on Mayakovsky’s death. In addition, this allows us to compare the range of emotions that were typical for newspapers with those which can be found in sources of personal origin. The analysis conducted in the article shows that representations of early deaths, perceived as critical events, stood out from the series of ordinary statements due to their increased frequency of reference to the sphere of emotions. At the same time, it is noted that the feelings conveyed during such periods of time are largely consistent with the emotional regime established outside of them.
